Report: Zoox Opens Rides to Public in San francisco
Andrew J. Hawkins reports for The Verge on Tuesday Zoox, the Amazon-owned autonomous vehicle company, is beginning to invite people on its public waitlist—those whom Zoox calls “Zoox Explorers”—to start hailing its robotaxis in select San Francisco neighborhoods. The announcement comes after the company last month began allowing select passengers to take rides in the vehicles. Rides will be free of charge.
Zoox, per a company spokesperson, currently has a fleet of approximately 50 vehicles operating in San Francisco and Las Vegas, according to Hawkins’ story.
“The experience sounds like it will be similar to Waymo: customers are able to hail a ride anywhere within Zoox’s service area, which includes most of the SoMa, Mission, and Design District neighborhoods,” Hawkins wrote of Zoox’s plans. “As a point-to-point service, riders can select their own destination, enter a street address, drop a pin, or select from a list of suggested points of interest. Walking directions to their final destination will be provided if needed.”
As Hawkins noted, Zoox vehicles are unique not only for their rectangular, toaster-like body, they, unlike Waymo, lack characteristics of human-driven vehicles like a steering wheel, sideview mirrors, or pedals. Hawkins described Zoox as “one of the few companies to offer rides in a fully driverless, purpose-built autonomous vehicle.”
Although I’m very much a driverless car truther due to my myriad positive experiences with Waymo, I’m keen on trying out Zoox someday hopefully soon. I’ve seen their vehicles a few times while out and about in the city, although the company’s service area—SoMa, the Mission—are areas completely across town from my haunts in the Inner Richmond. It would be quite the meta journey for me to take a Waymo to the South of Market area only to hail a Zoox over there. In any case, I think it’s good to see autonomous vehicles gain more of a foothold in San Francisco; using Waymo has been utterly life-changing in terms of accessibility as a Blind person who’s precluded from driving due to my low vision. From a journalistic standpoint, it’ll be fascinating to compare and contrast the experiences of Waymo and Zoox whenever I can try the latter.
News of Zoox’s gradual expansion of its service comes days after Waymo announced its cars are now able to traverse freeways here in the Bay Area, as well as in Los Angeles and Phoenix. I put my name on the “freeway waitlist” in the Waymo app, but have yet to have the functionality unlocked for me. I’m excited because, as one example, that Waymo does go on the freeway now means I could potentially travel more accessibly to media events in the South Bay at Apple Park in Cupertino and Google in Mountain View.
